Leave it to good ol’-fashioned Nazism to get the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger to see eye-to-eye. On Thursday night, as both report, professional photographer Jay Trinidad was headed home to Bainbridge Island when he saw a man dressed starkly in black, save for one bright red armband adorned with a swastika. Trinidad, a Filipino American, initially walked away before reconsidering and taking three deliberate pictures of the man. The photos are striking in a number of ways—how the man’s empty gaze gives nothing away, how the couple sitting next to him seems oblivious to the hateful symbol. The Weekly reports suggestions that the man in the picture was paid to wear the swastika and was perhaps even unaware of its meaning.
The encounter occurred the day after the shooting in Charleston, where another offensive symbol, the Confederate flag, where Republicans are finally calling for its removal, according to CNN.
